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Translation as Literary Ambassador

The runaway success of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy suggests that when it comes to contemporary literature in translation, Americans are at least willing to read Scandinavian detective fiction. But for work from other regions, in other genres, winning the interest of big publishing houses and readers in the United States remains a steep uphill struggle.

Among foreign cultural institutes and publishers, the traditional American aversion to literature in translation is known as “the 3 percent problem.” But now, hoping to increase their minuscule share of the American book market — about 3 percent — foreign governments and foundations, especially those on the margins of Europe, are taking matters into their own hands and plunging into the publishing fray in the United States.

Increasingly, that campaign is no longer limited to widely spoken languages like French and German. From Romania to Catalonia to Iceland, cultural institutes and agencies are subsidizing publication of books in English, underwriting the training of translators, encouraging their writers to tour in the United States, submitting to American marketing and promotional techniques they may have previously shunned and exploiting existing niches in the publishing industry.

“We have established this as a strategic objective, a long-term commitment to break through the American market,” said Corina Suteu, who leads the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture and directs the Romanian Cultural Institute. “For nations in Europe, be they small or large, literature will always be one of the keys of their cultural existence, and we recognize that this is the only way we are going to be able to make that literature present in the United States.”

For instance, the Dalkey Archive Press, a small publishing house in Champaign, Ill., that for more than 25 years has specialized in translated works, this year began a Slovenian Literature Series, underwritten by official groups in Slovenia, once part of Yugoslavia. The series’s first book, “Necropolis,” by Boris Pahor, is a powerful World War II concentration-camp memoir that has been compared to the best of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and has been followed by Andrej Blatnik’s “You Do Understand,” a rather absurdist but still touching collection of sketches and parables about love and intimacy.

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Books translated into English help nations large and small put their names on the literary map, said Corina Suteu of the Romanian Cultural Institute.Credit
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Dalkey has also begun or is about to begin similar series in Hebrew and Catalan, and with Switzerland and Mexico, the last of which will consist of four books yearly for six years. In each case a financing agency in the host country is subsidizing publication and participating in promotion and marketing in the United States, an effort that can easily require $10,000 or more a book.

“I can see the day coming soon when the only books we are going to be able to do are books that are parts of series,” said John O’Brien, Dalkey’s publisher, acknowledging the growth of the trend. “You’re not just doing it as a book publisher, you are doing it in conjunction with consulates, embassies and book institutes of other countries. That creates a considerable level of interest and a feeling that something much bigger is going on than ‘here is a book by someone I’ve never heard of before.’ ”

With limited budgets and even more limited access to mainstream media, foreign cultural agencies have also come to look upon the Web as an ally in promoting their products. They spread the word not only through sites of their own, Catalonia and Romania being typical examples, but also by using American sites established specifically to champion literature in translation.

One such site, with the tongue-in-cheek name Three Percent, was founded by Open Letter, the University of Rochester’s literary publishing house, and specializes in literature in translation. It has become a lively forum to discuss and review not just that subject but also the craft of translation. Another site, Words Without Borders, founded in 2003, publishes books in translation online and also provides an outlet where translators can offer samples of their work in hopes of interesting commercial publishers.

“Part of what we do is to give younger translators a place to debut their work that is not so high pressure, a place where they can try out being a translator and develop a little confidence before they tackle a big project,” said Alane Salierno Mason, the site’s founder. Words Without Borders began as a “tool for the publishing industry,” she said, but now also considers itself an online literary magazine specializing in translation. It has also begun “sending a newsletter to people in publishing, recommending particular works we have published online for book publication,” Ms. Mason said.

Words Without Borders has also commissioned projects, the most recent being “Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes From the Modern Middle East,” an anthology of short stories, essays, poems and memoirs translated from Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu. Edited by Reza Aslan, the book was picked up by W. W. Norton, which published it last month to strongly positive reviews; Publishers Weekly called it “an impressive success that spans vast regions of time and territory,” continuing, “this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting and informing.”

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William P. O'Donnell/The New York Times

Even the online bookselling behemoth Amazon.com has entered the field, with a new imprint for literature in translation called AmazonCrossing, which is sold online and in bookstores. The first AmazonCrossing offering, “The King of Kahel,” a novel originally in French by Tierno Monénembo, who was born in Guinea, was published in November. Five more titles, all but one fiction, have been announced.

The Amazon executive overseeing the imprint, Jeff Belle, said the company created AmazonCrossing because it saw “an opportunity in an area of the publishing world that is underserved.” He declined to provide specifics about how Amazon determines what books to publish, who selects them and how translators are assigned.

“We are lucky as a global company to have a lot of analytics at our disposal, across our global Web sites,” Mr. Belle said. “That has been very helpful in confirming our original theory that a lot of quality authors and voices have just not had an opportunity to reach U.S. audiences.” Beyond that, he added, “I’m afraid I can’t share exact sources with you.”

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While some independent publishers welcome Amazon’s increased involvement in, and support for, literature in translation, others regard it with suspicion. In a kerfuffle in October, Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House attacked what he called the “predatory and thuggish practices” of Amazon, saying that it was “clear to us that Amazon’s interests, and those of a healthy book culture, whether electronic or not, are antithetical.”

Amazon is more open about the grants it has made to entities like Open Letter and Words Without Borders. Government cultural institutes like the Institut Ramon Llull, which is dedicated to propagating the language and culture of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, and the Korean Literature Translation Institute have also helped underwrite conferences and books on translation, and others are sponsoring trips to take American translators to their countries to acquaint them better with their culture and people.

“It is evident to these people that there is very little support here for this kind of work, and that support is going to have to come from outside” the publishing industry, said Esther Allen, a literature professor at Baruch College and former director of the PEN Translation Fund. “There is still a very entrenched attitude on the part of mainstream commercial houses that the U.S. consumer of books does not want to read translations.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2010, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Translation As Literary Ambassador. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe